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In a continuing testament to our highly advanced Enterpainment Tonight society, super-developed evolution and values, we refer you to this story, which you've probably already read by now or at least heard about.

http://www.whatsonwinnipeg.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=33495

Dateline Los Angeles, the land of La-La Levity, three-month marriages and what have you.

The subject? Not Britney Spears. No way O.J. Tom Cruise is not the answer either. It's not about any of THOSE particular nutcases that fascinate us and are exposed to us by the media.

No, today's revolting personality is Lindsay Lohan and her spending less than one hour in jail in what appears to be just another photo opportunity to sell yet more advertising; to fill our dulled souls with nothingness.

It's destined to be the lead story, potentially, on what for millions seems to have become the real suppertime news: Entertainment Tonight or its copy-cat, mindless impersonators.

To be put up to public ridicule, where she can be laughed at, swallowed whole, digested like some little dysfunctional soundbyte...

...A movie star, a beautifully attractive woman with a whole bunch of problems, thrown into the lion's den to be gawked at, jeered, pitied, admired, I don't know.

Or whatever you feel about her or any of these other "beautiful people" who are really little more than and adored versions of the tallest or fattest or shortest people in the world from those freak shows of days past.

But what does our fascination with them say about us?

What are the motivations we have for watching and caring, and for the media to want to make us care and watch while these human trainwrecks run amok and fall off the rails and crash and burn and explode and implode?

Is it all for our amusement, some shallow, base thing inside of us that makes us like to see other people suffering or doing stupid, ugly things so that we don't have to focus on our own muddled, blurred existences?

Should we ask ourselves why we would even want or need to focus on someone else's stupidity or inability to cope with being too rich or famous?

Is it to try to get us to concentrate on the lives of public figures like Lindsay Lohan so we don't have to even think about what's really happening to our own lives as a result of the actions all around us and what we might be pretending isn't happening?

Is this kind of drivel shown to us because we've demanded to see it and the media is just meeting our hunger for the bizarre and bone-headed, or are we lapping up the only sustenance they're offering us, with some ulterior motive?

As in, diverting us from wars we shouldn't be in, the War on Terror governments aren't dealing with in our own societies (let alone those from other peoples), the military industrial complex, high taxes, poverty, lax gun laws, etc.

Why are we given all this pap that, in large part, that seems to be intended to get us to focus on the big loser? As in reality shows that embarrass people, where a bunch of obese people compete to see who can (or can't) lose the most weight?

Who's as smart as a fifth-grader? Who CAN'T sing or dance and then gets insulted by the judges? Why would we tune into a bunch of has-been actors/singers all living together with their lip rings, plastic boobs and totally washed out careers?

What is it about us that we'll tune into such crap where they present people for what appears to be little more than failure and ridicule?

Is it because we want and need to see people fail and look stupid? They call these "reality" shows. Is that because we all feel we're failing and helpless, and so we need to see other people fail on a bigger scale, to somehow make us feel we're not doing so badly?

Why is Dr. Phil so popular? He focuses on solving problems that a lot of people encounter. He's our psychologist for the masses, like some TV god sent down from above to administer free counselling for a society gone crazy.

Is being dysfunctional cool? Or is watching dysfunctional people be dysfunctional some sort of reassurance that we can't be as dysfunctional as them?

Is not being able to cope -- as Lindsay Lohan has shown she can't -- some reflection of who we are and where we're at, a message that if she can screw up with all that money, fame and beauty, then it's OK for us to be that way too?